Working blues

I haven't been very good about updating the blog, I've just been so busy with finals, work, and now the writing competition. Here's a bit that I wrote last week:

I'm in LA this week for a class. 10 students, it's not too big a class, but they're making me work for it. I've never had a class that asked so many questions. It's a good thing, they're involved, they're learning, but it's also a bit worrisome. This is the class I'm least qualified to teach out of the classes I teach. I've done the least amount of real work with the material of the class.

Two days in, they've asked me more questions than a normal class for all 4 days. The good news is that they're not smart enough to ask me smart questions that would expose my lack of knowledge of the subject. The bad news is that they're also not smart enough to read documentation. Thus, the exercises, which are basically right out of the documentation and the class slides, end up being a lot harder than they should be.

Now that the class is over, I've also realized that while they weren't smart enough to ask smart questions, they asked so many questions that they were almost able to expose my lack of knowledge of the subject. But I made it through the class relatively unscathed, so I guess I can't complain about it at this point.

Switching gears....

I generally don't like anti-bacterial soap. It's a bad thing. The argument as to why it's a bad thing goes something like this: anti-bacterial products claim to kill 99.9% of germs. What about the other .1%? They reproduce and eventually, all we have left are vast amounts of the bacteria that's resistant to anti-bacterial products. And what do we do at that point?

That's the basic argument, I don't have research that says anything, but I've read articles and heard NPR segments about this.

Tonight, I want my anti-bacterial soap. See, S and I made a mistake 6 months ago.

When we moved in, we bought a new trash can, and in the interests of keeping it our trash can, I wrote our address on it in permanent marker. After a few months went by, we'd been using our trash can primarily for picking up after the dogs. The dog crap got deposited in grocery store plastic bags, and then placed in the trash can. At some point, the trash can lid was left off, or blew off, and it rained. So here we were with a trash can full of dog crap in bags that were floating or sunk in water. Shortly thereafter, the water froze. Now we had ice with dog crap in it. Our other trash can filled up, and brilliant guy that I am, I put some pizza boxes into the trash can with the dog crap & ice melange.

Fast forward 6 months. This trash can, for the past few weeks, maybe 2 months, has been unfrozen, and you really couldn't get close to it without noticing the smell. I equate the smell with snake crap, but for most of you, that won't be an illuminating analogy. It smelled pretty bad, let's just leave it at that. We've not been sure what to do with it. If we throw it in a dumpster, it's got our address written on it, they could come find us. We can't just dump it out, because the smell would be unbelievable. Certainly don't want to dump it out right out back, because it would just run into our yard. Definitely didn't want that.

Tonight, though, we had the good fortune of having a terrific thunderstorm. Thunder, pouring rain, all the good stuff. So at 1:15am, I decide I'm gonna take care of the trash can problem. So I go out back, while it's pouring, and go to lift the trash can over the fence (the gate's locked, it's a 3' high chain link fence). This usually isn't a problem, except that I haven't accounted for the water that half fills the trash can. So I get the brilliant idea to jump over the fence, and pull it towards me. While in the process of doing this, I realize that the lid has arched a little bit and is now open, and I'm pulling this container filled with shit water towards me, and it's tipped towards me. Bad news. I can picture it, me covered in this water that's been sitting there for months. I guess that's one way to ensure that I never let this happen again.

But I'm successful in getting the trash can over the fence. I roll it down the alley, making a ton of noise in the process, I'm sure, hoping that the noise is covered by the sound of the rain. I get to a storm drain and dump out the water, or at least, as much water as seems to want to come out. Here again, I miscalculated. I didn't take into account how much water would have soaked into the pizza boxes that were in there. So it still weighs quite a bit. I'm gonna have to dump this shit-water-logged stuff into a trash bag.

So I come back into the house to enlist my sister's help in this process. It's at this point that I realize my hands smell. A lot. I don't worry about it too much, thinking that it will be fine after washing my hands. So we go out back and take some trash from the house with us when we go (tomorrow is garbage day, part of the prompting of this whole experience). My sister brings some bleach with us to dump into the trash can after we're done to start correcting the smell problem in that trash can.

It's still pouring, we have a double-bagged trash bag to dump this stuff into, and after a bit of concerted effort, we manage to get everything out of the trash can. Except now we have some on the asphalt in the alley. Soggy, shitty smelling bits and pieces of cardboard. Ugh. So, as I laugh, I tell her, "Hey, pick that up and put it in there." No takers on that one, as you can imagine. Maybe I shouldn't have had her smell my hand before we went outside.

So I use the garbage bag (the outer one) to scoop it up, tie up the trash bag, dump some bleach in the trash can, and head inside to shower and wash my hands. A shower later, several hand washings later, and the smell is still on my hands. I thought that I would put the problem to rest by putting some cocoa butter lotion onto my hands, making my hands smell nice. That is just not to be however, because after the initial period of nice smelling hands, after it soaks in, my hands just smell like cocoa butter snake shit.

Ok, enough typing, time to go wash my hands again.

Friends ending was so sad.

I can't say that I've liked Friends for quite a while. I haven't watched it for many years, though I've watched it this season since it was the last season. The last episode was better than several other last episodes from the last few years. Friends ended, as was inevitable, with Ross and Rachel getting back together. It's a simple principle: you give the viewers what they want for having watched for so long. You don't cheat the viewers. Yet, there are shows that fuck this up.

The worst perpetrator of this that I've seen....well, I'm a little embarrassed to say what I think it was. Ok, ok, it was Dawson's Creek. The entire series was about Dawson and Joey almost getting together, then in the last episode, she ends up with Pacey. Pacey!?!?! Are you fucking kidding me? The last two seasons of that show were almost unbearable to watch, the only thing that kept me going was waiting for Dawson and Joey to get back together. I had to watch her have a thing with her doofy professor (who was the "I wanna dip my balls in it!" guy from The State), have a fling with the guy with all his hair combed forward (Charlie), and then the other fling with Eddie (played by Oliver Hudson, Kate Hudson's brother). Those shows were ohmyfuckinggod awful, and I watched every single one of them, just to get to the finale. And then the producers served up that turd of a finale. Unbelievable.

The Seinfeld finale was a letdown, but at least it was true to the characters of the show. I'm not sure that there was a good way for that show to end, but at leaset they kept it consistent, and the audience didn't have any expectations for the wrapup of the series.

But for Friends, the sadness isn't about the show being over. And maybe that's true for a lot of shows. What's sad about the shows is that when I turn on the TV on Thursday nights, I'll have the reminder that I'm not in high school anymore. I can't believe 10 years have gone by since the show started. That was back when ER was still good. I imagine that the next two high-school era shows that will end will be NYPD Blue and ER, though I haven't watched ER since George Clooney left.

Now, I say all of this about how I can't pretend I'm in high school anymore, but I went and got a haircut yesterday. When I sat down in the chair, the first thing that the hair stylist asked me was, "You getting your hair cut for the prom?" I guess maybe I can still pretend if I want to.

This time, gmail for sure.

I'll start off talking about gmail so that I don't forget.

I got a GMail account last week. Google is giving them out to people who post regularly on blogger, and I guess I've been posting regularly enough to get the invite. I feel so special. If you don't know about this, gmail is gonna be google's answer to Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail. The difference being google's willingness to give you a gigabyte of space. But they don't guarantee that they'll really delete your mail (they call it "archiving" instead), and they scan your mail to be able to provide you with advertisements. So I started up an account there, the interface is extremely slick, and the site is also currently unbelievably fast, since there are virtually (no pun intended) no users.

Property exam was today. 3 hours of my life that I'll never get back, 3 hours during which I probably proved that I had at best a "B" knowledge of the subject. Though last semester taught me that law school grades don't measure anything about knowledge of the subject. Unfortunately, that's the only thing last semester taught me, so I didn't really know how to do things better this semester. But at least it's over. It's the least bullshit-able of the classes that we have this semester.

The end of this semester heralds the end of my time in B section, class of 2006. Next year, my section is scattered to the winds to the classes of their choosing. We haven't really had to make new friends all year, because we've gone from class to class together. Next year we have to meet some of the rest of our class.

Provided I can afford to return next year. :)

Gmail and more.

Last night, S and I went to the Rasputina concert together. Murder by Death opened for them, and they also have a cellist, though they're a little harder than Rasputina. They were ok, they showed some promise. But there's nothing that makes me want an album less than someone saying "This next song is about zombies." I thought the music was pretty good, but the vocals weren't mixed very well. That's the life of an opening band, though, I guess.

Rasputina came out and played for about an hour and a half. It's always surprising to go to a concert where the vocalist can sound as good as or better than on the studio album. But Melora sounded that way.

The audience was quite amusing. Take all of the people from high school who were uncomfortable at social events add all of the people who might have been labeled as "trenchcoat mafia," age some of them 5-15 years, and that's what the audience was. It's also not really a band you can dance to, in any way, though that's not to say some people didn't try. Well, one person, anyway. You know the episode of Seinfeld where Elaine dances? That's what this lady looked like dancing sometimes. She got really into the one song, and pretty soon legs and thumbs were flying everywhere. S laughed for a long time when I pointed out the similarity.

At one point in the show, Melora said, "We like it here, so depressing and forgotten." That pretty much sums up that part of Pittsburgh, and probably a lot of Pittsburgh, for that matter. The show was at Mr Smalls, in Millvale, this rinky-dink area of Pittsburgh North of the North side that really is depressing and forgotten.

Finals are upon me again, but that hasn't stopped me from going to a Pirates game two nights ago, and then the Rasputina concert last night. I've got jobs to apply for, mountains of Property to study, and I can't concentrate on doing those things. Other things, I've been pretty good about. School/Law related things, not so good.

Which probably means I'll be posting a lot here this weekend. :)

Disturbing trends

Last semester, there were a few people that I hung out with extensively. At my house, out for bar review, wherever. This semester, they've been gone pretty much every weekend, so there's been no hanging out. None. Which means that my "going out" time has dropped to virtually nothing as well.

So the first trend is: friends I had, I've been losing. Or it feels that way since we're not doing as much anymore.

Then there's also my friend acquisition trend. The only friends I've made this semester have been people that I talk to online (who are from school), but that I don't really do anything with in real life.

I'm not sure which trend is more disturbing, but they're both unsettling. In spite of all efforts to be pretty good about acquiring friends, I've become worse at doing that. And even if I do acquire a real life friend, I can't seem to keep them.

A great day for the Constitution

I've written before about my Constitutional Law class. Worst class ever. Worst professor ever.

Today we were talking about obscenity and pornography. Gave me a chance to inject some fun into the class. The first case that we were talking about was the case where a guy went into a courthouse (circa 1970) wearing a jacket that said "Fuck the draft" on it. In the opinion, the Supreme Court wrote that "one man's vulgarity is another man's lyric," and said that it was ok that he wore the jacket.

Not so for pornography. The Court said that it had no social value, yadda yadda yadda.

Prof: "So how do we reconcile these two cases."

Me: (raising my hand and getting called on....mine was the only hand up) "Well, I'm not sure that you can. It seems like the Court is making a content-based judgment on the material. 'One man's vulgarity is another man's lyric'....while I might not like bukkake videos, there's obviously a market for them, and others should be able to watch them."

Stifled laughs all around. Including mine. I like to laugh, I've been laughing about this whole scene ever since this afternoon. Mostly because I don't think the prof (a strong women's rights advocate) knew what bukkake is.

While talking about the "fuck the draft" case, she had been very careful to not say "fuck the draft," so when she called on me again for my participation in the discussion, I said that maybe a distinction between the two was that "fuck the draft" is political speech, whereas porn isn't. That was kind of amusing too, just because she's so politically correct.

I really wanted to say "fisting or bukkake" in class, but I didn't have the balls. I felt that would be too over the top, too blatant that I was trying to be shocking.

The good news is that we didn't finish the pornography discussion. Tuesday I can try to work in "fisting" and "coprophilia."

Scary porn

I can't say that I watch porn. Well, ok, but not a lot. I have one porn DVD to my name and one VHS tape that has 20 minutes of porn on it from years ago, something I taped when I was in junior high school. I got the DVD at a computer show...buy 3 for $20, so my friend and I split it. I took 2 DVDs, he took the other, 6 months later we switched. It's not good porn, obviously, but it's ok cheap porn. Just hacked together sex scenes from other porn movies that may or may not have incorporated more of a plot.

Even without watching much porn (or maybe because I don't), there are things that scare me about it.

For example, on one of the DVDs that we bought, there are two girls who are both on the VHS tape that I have from long ago, doing the um, same sorts of things. How scary is it to recognize people from porn? Along those same lines, at least two of the DVDs have different scenes with the same actors. How scary is it to recognize a porn actor, before seeing his face, by seeing his cock? Or even recognizing his method of jerking off onto the chick's boobs at the end of the scene.

I also hate it when they do just completely out of context things in these movies. Some chick shows up in a skirt, not wearing panties, but wearing rollerblades, and you want to take her rollerblades off and start licking and sucking on her feet? Ugh. Dude, you're nasty, she's nasty, just fuck her already. I'm not here to watch you put up some pretense of having something more than dirty sex with this chick. 5 minutes from now, you're going to be fucking her ass, I think we can skip the foot licking.

Then, the other day, while watching the DVD, I realized that the sheets on the bed in the movie are extremely similar to sheets that I own. Not entirely identical, or at least, if they are, the sheets in the video had faded quite a bit. You know you've gotten bad sheets if you see them in a porno film. Ugly paisley, that's what they are. Guidelines for life: don't buy carpet that you'd see in a hotel, don't buy a comforter you'd see in a hotel, don't buy sheets you'd see in a porno.

The great irony of the sheets, though: my mom bought them.

LSAT fun.

I was talking with someone about my LSAT essay, he suggested typing it up and posting it here, so I am.

LSAT WRITING SAMPLE TOPIC

Susan, an archaeologist, has the opportunity to participate in one of two archaeological digs and must choose between the two. Write an argument for the archaeologist's choosing one option over the other, keeping in mind the following goals:

• The archaeologist wants to achieve prominence in her field.
• The archaeologist wants to have autonomy in her work.

[Insert two descriptions of the two different digs here. ]

My answer:

If Susan must choose to participate in one archaeological dig and she only has two options from which to choose, clearly she must choose one option over the other.

Suppose Susan were to choose both. This cannot happen, however, because she can only choose one.

Likewise, she cannot choose not to go to a dig, as she must go to only one dig.

Therefore, since Susan must choose one of the options and not the other, she will be choosing one option over the other, as there is no other possibility.

Deja vu all over again.

I got an email last night from Reunion.com. For god knows what reason, I punched in my information on classmates.com years ago, and now they send me the monthly update on how many people from Emmaus High School have signed up in the last month. They've been sending it to me for years, I don't really care, it just goes to my Yahoo! Bulk Mail (Spam) folder, and I delete it from there. No big deal.

The mail that they send out is obviously generated by a script. I can already picture the SQL query that it uses to pull the information from their database. Having said that, it should be pretty easy to customize the script a little bit. You'll see what I mean in a minute.

The subject line (the only thing I've seen of the email other than who it's from) is: "2 New Students, 0 People Looking for jdl"

Now, I didn't need to be told that no one from high school is looking for me. I knew that already. When I was in high school, no one was looking for me. 10 years later, they sure as hell aren't looking for me.

But did I need reunion.com to tell me that? Did they really have to go out of their way to tell me that I'm a pathetic loser with no remaining friends from high school? I didn't need them to point that out for me, and I can't say that it has made me any more inclined to use the services on the site.

So what I want to know is why the dipshit programmer didn't think about this when coding the script. Obviously that dipshit programmer should have realized that he also probably falls into that category, the one who gets "0 people looking for you!" emails.

Then again, that dipshit programmer might live in India. Taking a job that might have kept me out of lawschool. Oh nevermind, that makes me feel better.

Calling all Rasputina fans...

Rasputina is playing here in Pittsburgh on 4/22. It just struck me that I have no idea whether that is part of exams period or not. Either way, it doesn't matter, I'm going to the show.

Anyone out there a closet Rasputina fan and want to go with me? "There's safety in numbers...my dear." (bonus points for someone who can get this quote, and miranda, you don't count, I just told you where it's from recently)

Bathroom humor

Why is it that guys find a need to spit into the urinal as they're stepping up to them? My female readership obviously wouldn't know about this habit, but it's fairly common to see guys walk up to the urinal, and as they're unzipping or stepping up, they spit into it. Sometimes they spit into it while they're pissing. Either way, what's the purpose? Every time I hear this done, I can't help but think about animals in the while that want to lick up the piss of the other competitors in the area. I guess I'm just not competitive enough to feel the need to spit into the urinal.

In the basement men's room at school, they've removed one of the urinals. It's just wall now. Maintenance actually put one of those "Wet Floor" things in front of it to ensure that no one overlooks the fact that there is no urinal and instead pisses all over the wall. This is in the law school, presumably we're smart enough to figure out that we shouldn't piss where there is no urinal. But I guess not.

The urinal that is missing is the one in the middle. There are three urinals, without dividers in between them. It's nice that the urinal is gone now, because some guys don't realize that you're never actually supposed to use the middle one anyway. Who wants to ensure that they stand next to another guy while they're both taking a leak? Apparently some guys do, but not me.

And why are guys expected to go to the bathroom immediately next to another guy? No one would ever think to make a women's room that just had toilets standing free without stalls. Women get some privacy every time they go to the bathroom, but guys don't even get a shred of it with the urinals without dividers. I'm not saying that the urinals need to have stalls around them, but the dividers make a big difference in the level of privacy that you have in the bathroom. With the dividers, I'd even say that it's ok to use the middle urinal (though some would disagree with that assessment).

It's even worse when you go to a stadium. There, you might just have a trough. A fucking trough. Now you can get splashed by someone else's piss, or have another guy elbow in next to you. Again, another indignity that women would never be expected to have to deal with.

So for any architects out there: Put in dividers!

CMU has a bathroom in the basement of Doherty Hall, one of the academic buildings, that has a men's room. On the door, after "MEN", someone scrawled a "U" in after it, so it's known as the "MENU" bathroom. The reason this bathroom has notoriety (and it's been years since I've been in there, so it might have been corrected) is that the stalls have glory holes in them and the bathroom is thus known as a place to have anonymous gay sex.

But I didn't know that my freshman year at CMU. And I'm not even sure that I knew what a glory hole was. And I happened across the "MENU" bathroom. I happened to use the bathroom without incident, but in looking back, by not fixing the bathroom, it seems like CMU opens themselves up to liability if an incident were to occur there. And of course, after I found out about the bathroom, I don't think I ever used it again.

This is probably far more than you ever wanted to read about men's rooms.

They've got nothing to say to me and still they open their mouths.

Some of the classrooms here at school have internet access, some of them don't. Two of the main lecture halls have internet access in the first two rows, but not in the rest of the room. Our Constitutional Law class is in one of the rooms that has partial access. Our professor is so incredibly bad (as a teacher; she's a nice person) that I've been bringing in a wireless router and hooking it up to a port in the first two rows, since I sit further back than that. So I've been providing an open access point for everyone's wireless all semester.

A while ago, I tried to be studious and decided that the wireless router was bad news for me. I stopped bringing it for two days, and everyone in my classes came out of the woodwork to bitch at me for not bringing in the router. They needed their internet access for this and that. One group of people who didn't say anything are the people who are actually my friends. The only people who bitched about it are the people that wouldn't even say hi to me in the hall (well, a subset of those people, anyway).

This week, while I was away, apparently I was the topic of conversations several times. I've heard it from several people. And of course, the only reason that people were talking about me was the fucking router. Again, the people who were discussing it were the same people who would bitch about it when I am actually there and don't bring it.

Last night, while out I saw one of these people at a bar, and again, the same conversation occured about how they missed me because of my router. I guess people just don't think about how offensive it is to talk to someone about using them for one thing and one thing only. But if you see them, tell them I prefer if they just use me and not talk to me. Or about me.

In a room full of people, still all alone.

I've had this experience many times. It's the same every time, pretty much. Only the location changes. You go somewhere, you're around other people, but their activities or their personalities don't really bring you into the group.

Over time, I've become more extroverted and it hasn't been as bad. The first experience of this that I can really remember was the first week at CMU when they had the "Clippership" cruise up and down the three rivers. That was the worst. I was stuck on a boat, at a party where I didn't really know anyone, and I was still pretty introverted at that point, so I wasn't inclined to socialize too much. I ended up sleeping for part of the cruise.

Last night's experience wasn't the same. I knew people at the party/get-together that I went to, I was socializing, I was drinking, I was not having a Clippership(tm) experience. I went more for the socializing than anything else, which I guess is an excuse, at least the day after. Beer pong was set up, and in viewing the scene, I couldn't help but think that life should have more meaning than beer pong. Obviously it doesn't, but maybe it should. We have been brought up to believe that drinking with your friends is a good time, but I can't help but think that: you're not really enjoying your friends when you're loaded (though they might be enjoying you); and that you can probably have as good a time doing other things with your friends. I guess my generation has passed me by, or maybe I just haven't found the right people yet.

Hi, I'm jdl, and I'm an IM Whore.

It happened gradually. So gradually I didn't notice that I had turned into one until it was too late. Now I constantly check my buddy list to make sure I don't miss a buddy signing on. I find myself having to restrain myself from IMing a person who just signed on. Obviously if someone signed on, it was to talk to me, right?

I need to put a stop to this. My buddy list grows every day. My time is being wholly consumed by IMing people. I can't read. I might miss an IM. I can't watch TV. I might miss an IM. Talk on the phone? Why do that, I can have 10 simultaneous conversations on IM. Pay attention in class? IM is much more interesting. It's interactive, you know. And it doesn't involve the reading that I haven't done.

Drugs? Who needs 'em? I get dopamine hits just hearing the IM chime. Natural drugs are cheaper, safer, and better than manufactured drugs anyway. I get hypnotized seeing the IM blinks at the bottom of my screen.

What the fuck are you doing still sitting there. Send me an IM already.

There's always gotta be one...

Whenever I teach a class, there's always one guy who doesn't shut up. Since I started law school, I've started to call this guy "Chadwick." He's gotta tell me all the details of his life, how his wife's calling him, how he loves some programming construct or computer dork thing, whatever. Prattle is what it is, and I have to smile and pretend like I'm interested. That's the hardest part of my day, dealing with the Chadwick guy.

He never sits in the back, either. Always right up front. Always ready to bother me when I sit down when they're doing an exercise or they're on a break. Never a moment's peace with him around. Even at lunch, I'm eating my fucking lunch, and I can't just sit and enjoy it, I gotta listen to him, talk to him, pretend I want to hear about what he did with his script to make it work. I can't exactly tell him to STFU, though I'd like to.

And it's always a him. Never a hot chick. That's not really surprising; I've only had 3-4 hot chicks in the 50 or so classes I've taught, odds are against me on that one.

I went out to this Afghani restaurant last night. The first time I've ever had Afghani cuisine, and it was one of the best 10 meals I've ever eaten. It was lamb tenderloin, served with this fabulous rice pilaf, along with some weird yet insanely good apple dish, along with some tasty spinach dish. The bread that went with it was excellent as well. I'm thinking that I might eat there again tonight, it was so good.

I had Ethiopian food for the first time on Sunday night. That was an interesting experience, some of it was really good, but I wasn't a fan of some of it. We got a sampler dealie, since I hadn't had it before. I went with my friend's girlfriend, which was interesting. I can't recall having gone out anywhere with a friend's girlfriend. That's probably because most of my friends are from CMU, and CMUers (ex- or otherwise) are, um, not lucky with the ladies.

Oh wait. I went to CMU too.

What the big black man says, the little white guy does.

After eating lunch and talking a bit to people on AIM, I ventured out to peruse the tie collections of local establishments. I wanted a tie that I can wear today and on Thursday, when I will wear a silvery shirt. The problem with teaching in a yuppie area is that there are only yuppie stores around. Banana Republic is here, but their tie selection sucks. And that's about it for the men's stores. Well, except for Jos. A. Bank. So I headed in there.

It took me a minute to get my bearings in the store, but when I did, I went straight for the tie area, where a large black man asked if he could help me. I told him what I was looking for: a tie that would go with my blue shirt that I had on, and the silver shirt. After looking at a few ties, he said, you should get this one. Let's sum up the situation. Me: white guy computer dork, not exactly fashion king. Him: black, works in clothing store, wears nice clothes. Easy choice, I bought the tie.

I didn't look at the price tag, though. Oops. I saw a sign near the ties that said "3 for $162.50" or something like that, and it was only after I checked out that I noticed that it was for the shirts. The tie, of course, wasn't $55. It was $69. Plus tax. So $73 later, I had myself a new tie, I put it on in the dressing room, went back to class.

But I can't help but think that $73 buys a lot of lunches at school.

You know that dream where you go to school in just your underwear?

There's always one thing you forget on a trip. Usually it's something really minor, or something that you wanted to have, just for so. Sometimes it's something major.

I dress up for teaching. My young appearance doesn't give me credibility, so I try to manufacture it. I wear nice clothes. I have a nice pen. I have nice shoes.

None of this is helped when I've forgotten my garment bag. Yes, this happened once. I drove to an event in Rockville, MD, and forgot my garment bag. I could have chosen to drive back to NC from DC, but it was a 4 hour trip, so I just bought new clothes. Not as good as I normally have, but they got me through the week.

I didn't forget my garment bag this week. I have my shoes, my pen, my shirts, my pants, my belt, my ties...no wait. I don't have my ties. I forgot my damn tie bag. It's still hanging up in the closet in Pittsburgh. Way to go me.

So I had to make a trip to Target. It's on the way to work, not a big deal. Everyone looks good in a Target tie, right? Right. Sort of. As it turns out, Target doesn't sell ties. The one here is one of the "mega" Targets, and it doesn't have a single men's tie. So I had to come to work without my tie. I'll fix the situation at lunchtime, but for now, I feel so naked.

Just like that dream.

I have measured out my life with my employer's evaluations.

This week, instead of being at school, like a good student would be, I have taken off. I will be working this week, teaching a programming language class. My students will be government employees and employees of large corporations, primarily. That's who my employer caters to.

Though my employer really only caters to people who pony up the $2500 to attend the class. Nevermind that it's an "advanced" class. If you can come up with the $2500, you must be "advanced," right?

At the end of the week, the students are given an evaluation of all things in the course: the instructor, the course materials, the facilities, etc. Again, since they could come up with the $2500, they must be qualified to fill this out, right? The real winner of the system is the fact that for each of the questions, they get to rate you from 0-4, from "frowny face" to "smiley face". Which means that no one really knows what the evaluations mean. Some people think that 2 is good, 4 is exceptional. My employer, of course, considers everything but a 4 a failure. Our average is supposed to be as close to a 4 as possible.

But they don't tell the students that. The students are supposed to divine what the numbers mean, or guess at what the ever-descriptive "frowny face" and "smiley face" mean.

The possible disparity between what the evaluations mean to the students and my employer has always led me to believe that they aren't really telling me much. How could they be? Students use them one way, my employer uses them a different way.

Now, there is space on the form so that the students can write freeform comments. Most of the time, nothing is written. When there is a comment, usually it's along the lines of "Great job!" or "Best instructor ever!" (no joke) I have even gotten comments about my clothes. One guy in New York said that I should tie my tie so that it's longer, and two women have commented that I have nice clothes. The one's was: "Nice clothes. If you're ever single and in Baltimore...." Too bad she was eating pork rinds. All week. Before 10 A.M. If there had been anything there (there wasn't), that pretty much sealed the deal.

I really like the fact that they have the space on the form for the comments, though, because it gives context for what number a person filled in. If they give me a 2, but say "Great job!", that's a lot better than just getting the 2. At least I know what 2 meant to that person.

And let's face it, that's more feedback than law school.

In summary: bad idea.

My family has a real defeatist, fatalistic streak. "You're gonna lose, you're a <insert last name here>." "<last name here>s don't win." That's the attitude that my family has.

But I'm trying to overcome it. I went to Atlantic City having played some roulette online, having done some charts to figure out how to play to win, and taking enough of a bank that I could win but wouldn't kill myself if I lost it all.

The upshot of the trip is that I'm down $73. That doesn't include parking ($10), buffet for 2 ($46), gas ($13), and maybe a toll or two (my sister paid a lot of those). It also doesn't include the $10 that a neighbor gave me or the $20 my dad gave me (neither of which are getting their money back).

What's more important is that I went, and I played with the attitude that I could win. I was out to play roulette. My friend wanted to get me to play craps, but there's way too much going on in that game. So I stuck with roulette, didn't play a single slot machine either. We started off at the Borgata. This morning started off pretty bad, I think it was the karma of the croupier, who was a sour guy. So before I had played for more than an hour, I was down $200. With my last $100, I sat back down with my friend, he lost all his money and told me to play red 21. The croupier had been getting a lot of those, and it hit. $35 more towards my bank. Then he told me to play black 17, which was what he had been playing, so I put $5 on that. That hit, giving me back $175. I had had a hit or two previous to these, so I was up to $352, and I cashed out. But the croupier shorted me a $25 chip and I didn't notice until after I had walked away. So I was really only up $27.

Then, this evening, we went to the Showboat to have the buffet, and we played some roulette after we ate. My friend lost some more money, and at one point, I think I was up like $80. He left, and my luck turned bad for a while. At one point, I had just about blown my entire bank ($300). Then my number hit, and I was still in the red, but at least I had 7 chips on the number, so it paid out $245, and I was a lot closer to breaking even. I put the $200 away and played the rest of the chips that I had (probably $60 or $70), lost all of those, and went home.

It was quite a thrill, and I can see how people get addicted to it, but I don't think that I have the stomach for it right now. Right now, $300 seems like a lot of money since I'm in school and don't have a job. I was shitting bricks when I had lost almost all of it and I was still putting $20-$30 in chips down on the table (in order to make up for the money that I had lost, I had to put a lot on each number). But it was an interesting experience, though I don't see a repeat performance happening any time soon.

When everything is said and done, I will have spent between $100-120 for my day in Atlantic City. It was my first time gambling (lottery doesn't count), I got to experience some highs and lows, and I think it was worthwhile. I think breaking out of the defeatist/fatalistic philosophy that my family has going is worthwhile, in any area of my life.

Except that the worst part might come tomorrow. The worst part being what I might hear from family members.

"I told you so."

As always, time to leave.

Oh fair and gentle reader! Fear not, for I shall return later this week to fill you in on how my trip to Atlantic City goes. Will lady luck be kind to me? Will I sleep in a car? Will you keep reading this blog?

These and other questions to be answered later this week.